


The Burtons At Leisure

by TheAstronomer



Category: Historical RPF, Richard Francis Burton - Fandom
Genre: Difficult men, F/M, Kama Sutra, Non-Graphic Smut, References to Sex, Victorian Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 15:43:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17470376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAstronomer/pseuds/TheAstronomer
Summary: Richard Francis Burton (Jemmy to his wife, Isabel) is prone to boredom. Isabel has her hands full keeping the infuriating, intractable and demanding man occupied.All my other fics are Tom Hardy characters related so sorryyyy if you came here for TH smut and got this strange Victorian dude offering instead, there is a sort of connection, if you read my notes...There's only 2 other RFB fics on Ao3 by neveralarch and they are quite brilliant and inspired this.





	The Burtons At Leisure

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Personal Narrative](https://archiveofourown.org/works/296621) by [neveralarch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveralarch/pseuds/neveralarch). 



Isabel Burton nee Arundell was, of course, used to Richard’s eccentric ways. She was not entirely conventional herself and both her pursuit and unwavering belief she would marry the dark, serious Richard Frances Burton was really a form of monomania. Even she was aware of that. She would hardly have otherwise persisted through the extreme displeasure her engagement to Richard had evoked in her parents,  _or_ endured the months,  _years,_ of his absences on infernal expeditions with the insufferable John Hanning Speke (the last of which, to seek out the source of the Nile, no less, Richard had returned from skeletal and half-dead and Speke temporarily blind, their working relationship in tatters.) 

Perhaps her parents objections to him not being catholic would have paled into insignificance if they knew even a fraction of his varied and exhaustive ...  _appetites._  Yet he was still her Jemmy. Other people would quail from Richard’s stern, dark gaze, oh Lord, his  _gypsy_ eyes, but not Isabel Arundel. She was made of sterner stuff and besides, her marriage to Richard had been predicted,  _foretold_ , by a genuine gypsy. By no less than the tall and imposing Hagar Burton (no relation, of course, but name  _not_  a coincidence, in Isabel’s opinion), the matriarch of the gypsies who regularly passed by Isabel’s family’s country home. Isabel, disobeying her parent’s orders, would frequently scamper down to visit at their camp at Stoneymoore Wood, spending time there helping out.   

Isabel’s horoscope was cast and written out in Romany by Hagar, as Isabel watched with round eyes, mouth ajar, the sound of wood pigeons softly cooing in the background.  With a stern eye on Isabel, Hagar then translated it into English, wagging her finger at Isabel at several points for emphasis. Later retellings of Isabel’s Romany fortune would often be unkindly be referred to by cynics as ‘a little too convenient’.  How could it possibly be that this gypsy woman would foretell that Isabel would take the name of Burton (hmm, the very same name as that venerable gypsy clan...), that she would meet her ‘destiny’ in a town across the sea (indeed it was Bolougne where hers and Richard’s paths first crossed!) That her life would nothing but strife, obstacles and travel?  How could a mere gypsy  _divinatrice_  envisage her whole life so accurately?  Isabel did not listen to naysayers or waver in fixing her eye upon her ‘polar star’ as instructed by Hagar. 

In the event, they were married, ten entire years after their courtship, of sorts, had commenced, and entirely lacking the consent and presence of her parents at the ceremony which took place at the Royal Bavarian Chapel.  Isabel did not necessarily consider herself a patient woman, but it was a quality she developed. Richard was a man who did not stay still for long, though Isabel was no wallflower, wilting palely against the barriers to their union – she kept herself busy, always, until that day in the Chapel in 1861.   

Persistence was also a key to the character of Isabel Arundel: both in her devotion to the cause of her marital union, but also in other matters.  Rejected by the powers-that-be a full three times from becoming a nurse in the Crimean War, Isabel - Boudicca-like! - instead led a group of 150 like-minded women into the slums of London to assist the forgotten wives and children of soldiers at war. 

Isabel was not a quitter. 

 

* * *

 

 Richard Francis Burton and his wife Isabel were fencing on the lawn of their house in Trieste, Italy. He wore only trousers and a loose white linen shirt; she, also barefoot, a light summer dress, bunched up and tucked into her underwear to allow her freedom to move around unencumbered.   

It was times like these that Isabel felt she and Richard were the only two people in the world.   

'En guarde, Isabel,' he said, gruffly, through his magnificent moustache. They both held lightweight Epee swords in their right hands, chosen by Richard.  Isabel expected this bout would be fast and furious as a result.  She looked at her husband's serious face.  Isabel knew he rarely made allowances for her in a match.  He himself had taught her how to fence and as a result he would never patronise her by allowing her to win undeservedly. 

'Allez, Jemmy!' Isabel returned and instantly made a graceful balestra towards him, followed up by a skilful feint.  His face rarely gave much away but she noted with satisfaction his brief look of surprise at her speed, a sooty eyebrow lifted but a fraction.  However, his parry was equally as swift. 

And so their bout progressed.  Isabel was committing a cardinal sin, as decreed by Richard, of allowing emotion to leak into her game.  It was difficult not to at times.  The man was impossible.  Intractable, ungovernable, demanding.   And deliberately perverse. These fencing matches were a release of marital stress for them both, despite Jemmy's instructions to remain stoic and emotionless in battle at all times. Isabel wondered: why didn’t  _all_ married couples fence to settle disputes or quarrels? 

His latest indiscretion?  Stalking into the drawing room in his fez and arabic tunic, where Isabel was entertaining some friends, and slapping down his latest manuscript on the table they sat round.  Several necks strained to see the title:  _A History of Farting._ There were scandalised gasps. 

 _'Really,_ Jemmy?!' Isabel had retorted.  He glared round at them all wordlessly before sweeping out again.  _Hm_ , thought Isabel, as she placated the deeply affronted ladies with more tea, liberally doused in sugar for their shock,  _perhaps not the friends to show Richard's latest translation of the_ Kama Sutra _to..._  much less a discussion of the positions they had attempted themselves: the Tigress a particular favourite of Isabels whereas Jemmy preferred the more robust offering of the Indrani. No, it was not the time or place, and indeed never would be. 

The rest of the tea party had continued on a rather more muted terms as Isabel puzzled out the reason for his errant behaviour. Or at least this particular  _episode_  of errant behaviour. Isabel concluded, as she often did, that the silly man was bored. What else could it be? Richard was struggling with their current settled life in Trieste, a job at the British consul, a life devoid of travel and adventure. Much like a gypsy himself, he had been nomadic his whole life, from childhood onwards; the peripatetic life of a military family had blown the Burtons like dandelion seeds all over Europe, whilst Isabel had a rather more rooted childhood, born into the first family home in Marble Arch, London, a spell of education in Convent of the Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre, Chelmsford and finally at age 16 to live at the Arundell’s country home, Furze Hall, a place of bounteous nature; a pond to skate on in the winter, and fruit trees groaning with sweet harvest in summer. 

Back on the well-manicured lawn, their whirlwind fencing match completed, Richard declared the winner.  They bowed to one another and with a pause and slight nod, Richard took off at breakneck speed across the lawn, tearing off his clothes to dive naked into the pond; his usual conclusion to their matches, regardless of weather and who the victor was. 

Isabel watched her husband pelt down the stretch of lawn leading to their small lake, his taut buttocks bouncing out of view, and reflected that Trieste was indeed a far cry from their time at the British consul in Damascus, the pinnacle of which, for Richard, was the occasion upon which the Governor of Syria had sent 300 men on a variety of steeds, including horses and camels, to kill him.  There had been some kind of... trouble with the locals. It was testimony to the strange angularity of her husband’s character that this experience merely prompted him to write: “I have never been more flattered in my life to think that it would take 300 men to kill me.”  Not to mention his slightly brusque telegram to Isabel herself when he was suddenly deposed from his role there and unable to even return to their home: “I am superseded.  Pay, pack and follow at convenience.”  Isabel had fully adopted his nomadic, if unpredictable and eccentric life, and so obeyed in a trice. 

And the infuriating man knew exactly when to use her childhood name (Puss!), and it was usually when he was trying to persuade her to try out  _yet another_  of the 64 positions of the Kama Sutra, as he worked his way through the translation of that... _rude_ book!  Indeed, the shadows thrown upon their bedroom wall by the dim light of the oil lamp on such occasions would have made a street girl blush.  The Splitting of The Bamboo in particular casting a most peculiar shadow at which Isabel had to stifle a laugh. 

“Do not laugh, Puss!” he commanded, panting with the effort “Does this one visit more pleasure upon your most sensitive parts, dear one?  Or should we return to the Milk and Water Embrace...?” 

“Oh,  _all_ , dear Jemmy!  All are …  _most_  satisfactory!” puffed Isabel, her head spinning from the quick succession of positions they contorted themselves into.  For Richard was very particular that Isabel should reach her natural conclusion during their love-making, as instructed by Vatsyayana himself within the pages of the Kama Sutra.  And reach it she did. 

And so the life of leisure for the Burtons went.  A strange mixture of Richard’s spectacular social faux pas (he was not called Ruffian Dick for nothing, after all) and moments of sweet peace and contentment, when he would sit at her feet bundled up one of his rough blankets from Arabia while Isabel read the latest draft of one of her own offerings to him.  Isabel was not sure her Jemmy was always entirely happy, indeed she suspected he felt most alive when quarrelling with people. The sheer perversity of the man! Isabel would cast her eyes up towards that guiding polar star, always, and remember most particularly a certain thought she had had about her feelings for him: 

“I love him, because I find in him depth of feeling, a generous heart, and because, though brave as a lion, he is yet a gentle, delicate, sensitive nature, and the soul of honour.”  Isabel would reflect.  “I wish I were a man: if I were, I would be Richard Burton.  But as I am a woman, I would be Richard Burton’s wife.”

Until the next time he embarrassed her.

**Author's Note:**

> I came across Richard Francis Burton while researching into the influences on the character of James Delaney, played by Tom Hardy, in the TV series Taboo. You can read my Tumblr post about it here if you feel inclined: https://littlevulpecula.tumblr.com/post/181747426781/littlevulpecula-influences-on-the-character-of 
> 
> Burton is a real person who lived from 1821-1890 although how much of the stories about him are true and how much have been mythologised is hard to say. All the events mentioned in this story are true, and they really did fence together. I might have made up them trying out the Kama Sutra however... He *was* the first person, working alongside another translator, to translate it into English.
> 
> Isabel was completely devoted to him in a very Victorian wife way but I also like to think she had the measure of him in some ways. This fic is very silly but I had a great time writing it. The last piece of dialogue is lifted straight from the autobiography Isabel herself wrote.


End file.
